Russian billionaire moves into Pacific salmon business

Sistema Public Joint Stock Financial Corporation with the Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov as main owner has purchased its first asset in the fishing business, reports Megafishnet.com.

According to Kommersant, the corporation’s Kamchatka Project Management Company acquired 49% of the local enterprise "Zarya" harvesting about 20 thousand tons of Pacific salmon per year as well as processing and selling caviar/roe.

It is believed that the transaction with an estimated cost of 5-7 billion rubles, may allow Sistema to start consolidating the Pacific salmon industry.

Zarya LLC, a large fishing and processing company on the west coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, owns the rights to five river fishing sites and 16 sites in the Sea of Okhotsk. It also has two factories with a total capacity of 460 tons of products per day. The main species are sockeye salmon, pink salmon and chum salmon.

According to a representative of the corporation, with a catch volume of more than 20 thousand tons per year, Zarya occupies about 10% of the Kamchatka salmon market and 5% in Russia.

Apart from salmon and roe/caviar, it also sells fish of bottom species. In 2020, Zarya's revenue increased 2.7 times, to 3.4 billion rubles while the net profit increased 6.1 times, to 1.97 billion rubles, year-on-year.